VATICAN CITY — The Vatican newspaper and radio station have called the film “Avatar” simplistic, and criticized it for flirting with modern doctrines that promote the worship of nature as a substitute for religion.

L’Osservatore said the film “gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature.” Similarly, Vatican Radio said it “cleverly winks at all those pseudo-doctrines that turn ecology into the religion of the millennium.”

“Nature is no longer a creation to defend, but a divinity to worship,” the radio said.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said that while the movie reviews are just that – film criticism, with no theological weight – they do reflect Pope Benedict XVI’s views on the dangers of turning nature into a “new divinity.”

Benedict has often spoken about the need to protect the environment, earning the nickname of “green pope.” But he has sometimes balanced that call with a warning against neo-paganism.

In a recent World Day of Peace message, the pontiff warned against any notions that equate human person and other living things. He said such notions “open the way to a new pantheism tinged with neo-paganism, which would see the source of man’s salvation in nature alone.”

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Well, I can understand why the Vatican feels as if it’s important to comment… Even Ovid at the turn of the millennium in his day…essentially suggested to “give up on the mythologizing” that originated as far back as the Homeric theogony. Everyone in Ancient Greece understood that the god’s were crazy and/or mad. That was the purpose of teaching Greek youth very important lessons about life. But again Ovid suggests to give up on the classical manifestation as such because “classical themes in the stars, made people a little irrational” once the theogony had become ancient and lost it’s essential understanding by a public whom use it for teaching. Chase to this day even we really don’t learn by Homer’s theogony…in fact a classical education is very hard to acquire but should “an initiate” encounter it by happenstance, or deliberate searching out, so be it…but not many are taught that way anymore.
But it’s always been accepted that such teachings came from a much older understanding of the Earth and indeed even ancient remnants of the matriarchy. A matriarchy whose traditions and fables have as late been over written, denied or obfuscated deliberately.
It is delightful to preoccupy one’s self with Jungian archetypal material: It makes good reading and is very informative of our collective pasts as being part of the human race and preserves our own factual individualism and personal differentiation. But it is a fine line for men to identify (some times) with a matriarchal understanding of “mother Earth”. But with knowledge and edification of the origins of the traditions and understanding, in short, I think it’s excellent that we rediscover the truth and origins that have through out histories beginning originated around a more wholesome Earth gestalt.

I spent all all week at Disney World with grandsons who were freezing. I met many people from Germany, Denmark, etc: They are having record cold also. Global Warming is a farce liberals won’t let go of no matter what the facts are.